ROG Ally 2nd Screen Mod turns the handheld gaming PC into a dual-screen device

The Asus ROG Ally is a handheld gaming PC with a 7 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel touchscreen display, an AMD Ryzen Z1 or Z1 Extreme processor, 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM and a 512GB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD.

But what if it had two screens instead of one. Asus may not offer an official dual screen option, but hardware hacker YesItsKira designed and built one and then posted all the details to a ROG Ally 2nd Screen project on GitHub.

In a nutshell, the process of adding a second screen to the ROG Ally involves taking a 7 inch portable display, using a USB Type-C dock to connect it to the handheld computer, and stuffing everything inside of a few custom 3D printed parts.

More specifically, YesItsKira used the WIMAXIT M728, which is a 7 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel IPS LCD touchscreen display. Normally you’d need an HDMI cable and a USB cable for video, touch, and power, but the ROG Ally lacks an HDMI port. So that’s where the USB-C dock comes in.

And the 3D printer parts include a replacement for the ROG Ally’s back cover, a shell that houses the display, and a 360-degree hinge that positions the screen above the primary display, but which also lets you fold the second screen forward or backward.

YesItsKira also removed the printed USB-C dock’s PCB (printed circuit board) from its original case in order to squeeze it behind the display and fit it inside the 3D printed case. You can also remove any of the ports you don’t need from the screen’s PCB in order to save space.

You can find a complete list of parts, design files for the components that need to be 3D printed, and other details at GitHub.

via HackADay